Reading Lists

Our weekly Reading Lists compile editors’ selections from Boston Review’s decades-long archive that speak to the pressing political, cultural, and intellectual debates of our time.

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Dispatches from the Forever Wars

A special section in our Spring 2026 issue, with writing from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and the West Bank.

Remember Iraq? Remember Syria?

The still-reverberating consequences of U.S. foreign policy

Trump’s First Year

The violent reconfiguration of U.S. politics and power

Our Most Loved Pieces of 2025

Revisit the writing from this year that readers turned to the most.

The Literature of Repression

Reading fiction under fascism

Lessons from the March on Washington

The long arc of movements for social justice

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Eighty Years after Hiroshima

Eight decades of the contradictions of “nuclear democracy”

Before Alligator Alcatraz

The sordid history of U.S. immigration detention

Five Years of COVID-19

Looking back on the defining crisis of our time

Trump’s War on Government

The destruction of the administrative state

The Unfinished Revolution of Black History

Farah Jasmine Griffin, Cornel West, and more

Trump’s First Week

A spate of destructive executive orders

Our Health Insurance Dystopia

Elizabeth Anderson, Adam Gaffney, and more

Democracy in the Balance

Robin D. G. Kelley, Jan-Werner Müller, and more

One Year Since October 7

Noura Erakat, Ariella Azoulay, Judith Butler, and more

Our Virulent Anti-Immigrant Moment

Harsha Walia, G.M. Tamás, Arundhati Roy, and more

The World After 9/11

Noam Chomsky, Adom Getachew, Elaine Scarry, and more

The Labor of Politics

Union wins, climate organizing, sex worker struggles, and more.

Back to School Syllabus

Vouchers, teachers, reformers, and more.

What Can Documentary Do?

Errol Morris, Frederick Wiseman, Ariella Azoulay, and more.

Development and Its Discontents

Writing from our archives on development economics and its critics.

The Contradiction of Nuclear Democracy

Robert Jay Lifton, Elaine Scarry, Randall Forsberg, and more

The Grievability of Black Lives

On police violence, the killing of Sonya Massey, and a path to change.

What’s Happening with the GOP?

On the RNC, J.D. Vance, Oren Cass, and more

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